The seriously slow speed of the board is an indicator that it's close to falling over completely. Whether it's too much archived material, a fault with the board servers or whatever, a blowout is imminent.

Can I suggest that you ask all members to delete all PMs that they don't need and ask the webmaster how the archiving system is connected to the whole board. In the past you've had seasonal boards and this is no longer being done. Before we all drown in our own rhetoric maybe we can be proactive before the inevitable occurs.

I don't know zip about technical issues but for about the last half-hour (9-9:30AM, New York time) the board has swung between quick access to two or more minutes to access a thread. This suggests that it isn't the volume of archived material that's the problem but server capability.

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."